With this transaction of approximately $352.4 million, IMC has now issued a total of $2.02 billion of new Canadian CMBS bonds since 2011. This is the first multi-seller transaction for IMSCI with collateral contributions from multiple sellers including IMC, Royal Bank of Canada, and Trez Commercial Finance Limited Partnership.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – September 17, 2015 – Washington, D.C. based Commercial Real Estate Finance Council (CREFC) today expanded its global presence with the official inception of the CREFC Canada Chapter.

The Canada Chapter is being formed to bring CREFC’s trade association benefits and services to Canadian commercial real estate lenders, bond investors and loan servicers. The Canadian commercial real estate finance market is healthy and diversified yet, until today, been missing an industry platform on which to organize, associate, educate and advocate.

Institutional Mortgage Capital (“IMC”) announces the successful completion of its sixth Canadian CMBS issuance (Institutional Mortgage Securities Canada Inc., Series 2015-6, $325.4 million). With this transaction, IMC has now issued a total of $1.7 billion of new Canadian CMBS bonds since 2011.

IMC is the leading originator of Canadian CMBS and has a well-deserved reputation of bringing new issues to market that feature strong and uniform underwriting fundamentals across its entire mortgage pool. The IMSCI 2015-6 transaction continues this practice with 100% of the mortgage pool being originated by IMC.

Institutional Mortgage Capital (“IMC”) announces the successful completion of its fifth Canadian CMBS issuance (Institutional Mortgage Securities Canada Inc., Series 2014-5 $311.8 million). With this transaction, IMC has now issued a total of $1.339 billion of new Canadian CMBS bonds since 2011.

The IMSCI 2014-5 transaction is the third Canadian CMBS deal in the past 12 months to be marketed in both Canada and the United States and generated strong interest from U.S. investors who acquired more than 35% of the bonds. In addition, almost 50% of the bonds were sold to new investors who had not previously purchased CMBS bonds off the IMSCI shelf. The deal was supported by a strong syndicate comprising seven dealers across Canada and the U.S. and was jointly led by RBC Capital Markets (structuring lead), J.P. Morgan Securities and National Bank Financial.

RBC Capital Markets news issue bulletin states that Institutional Mortgage Capital successfully priced a C$312MM CMBS transaction back by a portfolio of 41 commercial mortgages loans on 14 July 2014. This is the first Canadian CMBS transaction of 2014 and the fifth transaction for IMSCI since 2011. This transaction attracted several investors new to the Issuer and 35% of investors were from the U.S. This reflects the continued confidence in both the Issuer and the re-emerging Canadian CMBS market.
IMC is the leading originator of Canadian CMBS and has a well-deserved reputation of bringing new issues to market that feature strong and uniform underwriting fundamentals across its entire mortgage pool. The IMSCI 2015-6 transaction continues this practice with 100% of the mortgage pool being originated by IMC.

Institutional Mortgage Capital (“IMC”) announces the successful completion of its fourth Canadian CMBS issuance of $330.4 million (Institutional Mortgage Securities Canada Inc., Series 2013-4). This transaction has been rated by Fitch and DBRS. IMC has now issued a total of $1.069 billion of new Canadian commercial mortgage backed securities since 2011, and has a 52% total market share of new Canadian issuance.

Canadian CMBS investors are a very happy group; and no wonder – it can’t really get much better. Canadian CMBS has a pristine credit record, with only 0.087% of cumulative losses from market inception (1998), and a current delinquency rate (0.27%) that is lost in rounding. It pays on time – 98.1% (by dollar value) of all Canadian CMBS loans have repaid at or within 120 days of scheduled maturity. Furthermore, Canadian CMBS has been “stress tested” – Canadian CMBS investment grade bonds proved to be far more resilient to the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and recovered their value much more quickly than U.S. CMBS bonds and many other credit products. On top of everything else, the new issue Canadian AAA and A CMBS are currently trading at a discount to U.S. CMBS bonds (with up to an 18 to 34 bp pickup in spread to investors). For U.S. investors, or frankly any non-Canadian investor, who wishes to diversify their portfolios, new issue investment grade Canadian CMBS is truly the “low hanging fruit” in this market.

Canadian commercial property owners have relatively few sources of term financing compared to their US counterparts. Of course, it helps that the US commercial mortgage universe is roughly 15 times the size of the Canadian market, but even on a dollar adjusted basis, Canadian borrowers are hardly spoiled for choice.

Pursuing commercial mortgage financing, Canadian borrowers have long had the option of turning to a portfolio lender. Portfolio lenders lend with the intention of holding a mortgage from funding through to maturity. It’s a category dominated by a handful of financial institutions, insurance companies and public and private investment managers, that has managed to scoop up the majority of the Canadian commercial mortgage origination market year over year since the early days of real estate finance.

Institutional Mortgage Capital Canada Inc. (“IMC”) is proud to announce it has completed a private placement of commercial mortgage backed securities (“CMBS”) with an aggregate principal balance of C$206,000,000. The transaction is the first CMBS deal issued in Canada since 2007. The deal, entitled Institutional Mortgage Securities Canada Inc., Series 2011 (“IMSC 2011-1”), is backed by 16 loans to two of Canada’s largest REITS, RioCan REIT and Calloway REIT. The certificates were issued by Institutional Mortgage Securities Canada Inc., an affiliate of IMC, with TD Securities as the Lead Placement Agent.

Two major real estate companies are tapping the market for $206-million in the first deal of its kind since 2007, signalling that investors are returning to a sector they had abandoned over worries about the health of the country’s commercial real estate market.

Prior to the recession, Canadian real estate companies went to the CMBS market for about $4-billion a year in low-cost financing. The market literally vanished as lenders retreated and investors shunned higher-risk securities, forcing real estate companies to obtain mortgages almost exclusively from large banks.